


So Heavy

by Gildedmuse



Category: Across the Universe (2007), Hair - MacDermot/Rado/Ragni
Genre: Angst and Feels, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gift Fic, M/M, Niche Fandom Fic, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Short One Shot, Unrequited Crush, Vietnam War, War Is Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-25 14:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18576373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gildedmuse/pseuds/Gildedmuse
Summary: Max's thinking keeps Claude up at night.





	So Heavy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheHeroHeart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHeroHeart/gifts).



> [Originally posted to LJ in 2008]

**So Heavy**

 It's too damn hot out here for a war.

The air in the Vietnam jungle is sticky with humidity and heat. Even once the sun has gone down, the whole jungle stinks worse than New York ever did or maybe that is just the tank, packed full of young soldiers with their smokes and their dirty clothes and washed out bodies and the stink from all the young Asian whores willing to shag even an American boy for the right price.

Shag. Huh. That's his word, not Max's.

Inside their foxholes, the heat and stench get worse. Most nights it's five or six of them cramped together in a single trench, using their packs and pillows and with blankets strewn around. As if they needed them when the heat was enough to cook a man's skin.

Tonight, Max wraps himself tight in that shoddy government issued blanket. It's hot as all hell, or maybe hell is nothing compared to this damn country and her fucked up war, and Max is freezing. Sure, his skin is blistering and sticky with weeks worth of sweat, but part of him can't get warm.

He tries to think and remember home now, when it's dark and the men are mostly asleep. They tell them to imagine the celebration when they come home in victory. Will there be a victory? Well, they tell him there will be and Max can't question that, since they also tell him never to question what they tell him and so he believes them and, fuck, this is what happens when your mind starts to rot with the jungle heat.

Back home he'll get off that plane and there will be Jude, just behind the gate and waiting on him. Standing on his toes, looking over the head of all the other families and girls and, God, how his face will light up when he sees Max walking out (and in Max's mind he looks just like he did when he left. Not made into a carbon copy of every other soldier but like Max, damnit) and he'll push through the crowd and not care how sees him lift Max up, swing him around, tell him how happy he is to have his friend back. And Max will smile again, God that will feel so good, he'll smile again and Jude will laugh and touch him and they'll be fine.

Max licks his lips, dry and bitter tasting with sweat, and he sees Jude clinging to his shirt on the walk home from the bar after their celebration and he feels hot palms slipping down his chest as the two stumble and fall against one another and he feels breath hotter than the jungle air on his cheek and the brush of hair against his neck and a boy so close they could almost disappear into one single person.

And then he sees the way Jude will wrap himself up in Lucy when she comes to take the smashed-out-of-their-minds boys to bed Max opens his eyes, because the inside of this overheated, cramped dirt hole is a welcomed release from those memories.

"Stop that." Fuck, what is that? Human contact, the non-violent kind, is turning so rare that his body doesn't know what to do but fight against it and just the sound of someone speaking makes Max tense up, ready for the gun fire that inevitably follows. Only it's just a boy, another soldier, curled up right next to Max. So close that when one of them shifts they knock against each other. But this is the first time Max notices him as anything more than a pile of regulation clothes and flesh.

Big, big blue eyes and hair like the rest of them, clothes like the rest of them, everything just like everyone else including Max. But he's got big blue eyes, narrowed now as he knocks his knee against Max for attention. "You're keeping me up."

Max snorts, and the sound echoes around the whole tank and, oh God, he'd almost forgotten what it feels like to use his own voice, they're always told to stay so silent. Quiet or they'll get bombs, shoot up, dead and he'd go home but not the right way. "I'm keeping you up? I wasn't even saying anything."

The boy sighs and settles against his pack, looking more comfortable curled up in this tank than he has any right to like a boy use to sleeping on the ground. "It's in your breathing," he mutters, voice low and sleepy and it's hard to believe this kid is just trying to start a fight, but that's the only reason any one seems to talk anymore. "Berger use to breath like that, when he was thinking thoughts to big for this universe and he got all awake on them. It's keeping me up, man."

"Well, I'll try and cut down on my breathing then." Max's voice is sharp, it's got nothing but cut to it. It sounds like something he would have said back, way back then, but even he can tell there is some part of it missing. The part where he smiles and jokes and remembers that people don't all want him dead.

Max is trying to stay cool, he's trying to stay just like he was before they snatched him up and shipped him off here and cut his hair and called him soldier instead of Max, but every day it gets harder. He's forgotten certain things, big things like songs and smells from back home. Small things like how many drinks it took before Jude would start singing along with Sadie's band. Things that Max never wanted to lose, but they slip out of his sweating hands in this nasty heat. Still, he's got to keep acting normal, because if he does maybe he can get the hell out of here alive. That's all anyone is looking for.

The kid opens one eye, bright blue and baby blue, and actual grins. At least Max thinks he's smiling, hard to tell with how he's managed to tuck himself up in his arms. "Girl or boy?"

Is there any way he can follow what this kid is talking about, or should he just give up?

 

"Told you, you're thinking, man, I can hear it. So girl or boy?" The kid repeats, and it's sort of driving Max crazy. This is the first conversation he's really had since he got here, and he can't even understand most of it.

"Happy thoughts," Max answers, trying to force some kind of lightness in his own voice, which just ends up making it sound scratchy and old. "Mom and fireworks and apple pie and all those things a strapping young American boy like myself thinks of."

This time, yeah, he's sure the kid smiles because it stretches out his whole face, and he laughs too. It's been forever since Max heard anyone laugh. "You were thinking of fucking apple pie?"

And for some reason, Max finds he can actually smile back. "Better than my hand," he reasons, and the boy laughs again, just barely. Enough that a fox hole over, someone yells at him to shut the fuck up.

The kid just grins and covers Max's mouth with his hand, pressing a finger to his own lips. Right, they're suppose to be quiet, always quiet and never, ever happy. Those are the rules, and they're not meant to be questioned.

"I'm Claude." He says it so soft it's almost mouthed and not spoken, but Max definitely hears him, and he takes Claude's hand from his mouth and gives it a shake.

"Max." It's the first time... Yes, the first in this new world, absolutely, that Max has told anyone his first name. "Nice to meet you, Claude."

"I'm pretty sure I'm going to die here, you know."

It's such a change from talk about breathing and the universe that Max is still shaking from it even as Claude smiles, almost laughs like there is something honestly funny about this. "I feel it, part of the plan is all." Smiling but those big blue eyes, they look afraid. They're staring right through Max, and he knows enough by now to tell when a soldier is afraid, because it's almost all he ever sees when he accidentally looks. "They're all calling out for me and I can't even answer."

"Hey, well, you know, don't say that stuff." It's as comforting as Max can be. It's not like he just say, hey, don't worry about it, none of us are going to die, because like hell they will. They've been dying, and no one seems to care they just throw them out in front of more bullets. "You gotta keep thinking those happy thoughts."

"But you, I have a good feeling about you." Claude's got a smile like a little boy, like Jude when he gets so drunk he can't stand and then when he starts grinning at Max it shows off his baby cheeks and it's so fucking beautiful. Only instead of that, Claude's smile just makes Max afraid because who can smile like that all the way out here. "You'll get back to her, don't worry, man. I know these things, or well... No, but I have a feeling, so that's good."

"Yeah.. Yeah, that's good," Max mutters, unsure how else to answer. And somehow, just a bit, he does feel calmer, safer even in this damn ditch because maybe he will be alright, and he will see Jude again, and maybe when he does he'll be brave enough to say something other than just hello, I'm back from the war and how are you.

But then most of him doubts it, and it's too damn hot out here to think of something better, something real he can say when he gets home. So Max just concentrates on not letting his breathing bother Claude, and tries not to think of Jude and New York at all anymore.


End file.
